Health minister unveils plan to expand medical insurance

Armenia's minister of health on Thursday announced a government plan to apply medical insurance policies to the general population.

Levon Altunyan said they treat the idea as a pilot program in the sphere of mandatory health insurance.

He added that they intend to broaden the scope of the already adopted reforms to apply them also to non-beneficiaries of social packages (employees of government-funded institutions, etc).

“The [current] system addresses the needs of a population of 80,000-10,000, so if everything goes smooth, we will propose a draft decision in six month to apply the formula to 612,000 more people. If that process is a success, we will propose mandatory insurance for the general population in a year,” Altunyan told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

As for the estimated outcome, the minister said they expect the system to alleviate the population’s burden of waiting in unnecessary queues, allowing patients to apply to the medical institutions and specialists of their own choice.

“If one doctor can receive 20 patients a day, we cannot possibly make that person increase their number to 40,” he added.